All This and Heaven Too (1940 Anatole Litvak)

In Casey Robinson's adaptation of Rachel Field's 1938 novel, governess Bette Davis accidentally starts the French Revolution, and Charles Boyer succumbs to poison rather than admits he loves her, both points with which I have some issue, but neither nearly so much as the ultra sicky, sentimental ending which would make a snake puke. Fortunately there's lots else to enjoy in 2 1/4 hour drama, in which Davis's perfect governess for Virginia Weidler (who Q correctly identified from The Philadelphia Story), June Lockhart, Ann Todd and Richard Nichols is constantly bedevilled by quite crazy wife Barbara O'Neil. Jeffrey Lynn is a well-meaning priest, Harry Davenport a mischievous caretaker, and didn't recognise either Walter Hampden or George Coulouris.

Creepy, Burtonish trees you get at Warner Bros.

Music by Max Steiner, shot by Ernie Haller, makeup by Perc Westmore, art direction by Carl Jules Weyl (German-born, orginally an architect in the US in the 1920s).